If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles. I bequeathe myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I depart as air-I shake my white locks at the runaway sun It flings my likeness after the rest, and true as any, on the shadow’d wilds I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,Īnd if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,Īll goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,Īnd to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.I too am not a bit tamed-I too am untranslatable What do you think has become of the young and old men?Īnd what do you think has become of the women and children? I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,Īnd the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,Īnd I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,ĭarker than the colorless beards of old men,ĭark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, soon out of their mothers' laps, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.Īnd now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Growing among black folks as among white, Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.Īnd it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,Ī scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,īearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. To learn more about scholar Christopher Hanlon, click here.Ī child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands To learn more about Walt Whitman and his work, visit the Walt Whitman Archive, a magnificent compendium of information about Whitman's life, cultural context, and editions of Leaves of Grass. To read the text of this poem, click here or see below: We discuss the poem's prophetic voice, its patterns of repetition, the connective tissue that binds his ideas and invites readers in, and the cultural context in which Whitman produced his work.

In this episode, Christopher Hanlon joins us to discuss an excerpt from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

Song of myself in leaves of grass